Civilization I was the best of the series, and my vote for best video game of all time. The only one that improved on it was Alpha Centauri, which got a lot of

Civilization I was the best of the series, and my vote for best video game of all time. The only one that improved on it was Alpha Centauri, which got a lot of the automation right. All the other Civ sequels have just found ways to add more "work" without actually making the game any more fun. Master of Orion (again, the first one) was pure awesome and I still dig it up to play it at least once a year. It's one of those games where you wish that somebody would build an interface that ran the original executable in the background to power a more modern UI. There's nothing that needs changing. Nothing that could be changed without making it worse. As MOO2 and MOO3 demonstrate. Ultima 3 & 4 were the best of their series, and (combined with a hex editor) got a lot of my generation thinking about the mechanics of game programming. Lode Runner would be cool to see again. Not sure how a modern version would work for today's audiences. At least you have the several failed remakes to look to for inspiration on what not to try. There are lots of others. Entire genres, in fact.